Childhood Escape: The Library

Every Saturday of my childhood, for as far back as I can remember, my mother went to the hairdresser’s for her weekly wash and set. That was back when they called them beauty parlors. This one was in Kaimuki, a suburb of sprawling Honolulu city that was once a thriving merchant district. By the time my sister and I were born, it had started to stagnate a bit, but I loved it.

There was Aotani Fountain, where you could get root beer floats and corned beef hash patties with a scoop of sticky white rice, as Hawaiian locals enjoyed. There was the Kress store, a five and dime that sold everything from ladies dresses to electronics to holiday decorations. There was the “crack seed” store that sold Chinese style dried fruit preserved in a mixture of syrup and spices stored in great glass jars – that salty-sweet licorice scent is the smell of my childhood.

Best of all, there was the library. It was a block and a half from the salon and we were allowed to walk there. On days when mom was having a permanent, we got an extra hour – a special treat. It was my heaven. There, I discovered the wondrous works of Edith Nesbitt and Edward Eager. I spent hours in the children’s reading section, selecting which treasures to bring home. I loved the smell of the books and the feel of the protective cellophane covers. To this day, the crackle of a cellophane covered library book when you open it is a magical sound to me.

When my mother arrived to collect us, freshly coiffed and beautified, I’d scoop up my armful of books with the glee of a successful hunter. These are some of my happiest memories. Those Saturday mornings, in the pages of those crackly books – that is when I learned to time travel. When I mastered the mysteries of the card catalogue and the Dewey decimal system, I found I had access to hundreds of portals to different worlds. Now, I’ve got the Internet and I have a world of information at my fingertips. It’s not the same, though.

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Nanea Hoffman is the founder of Sweatpants & Coffee. She writes, she makes things, and she drinks an inordinate amount of coffee. She is also extremely fond of sweatpants. She believes in love, peace, joy, comfort, and caffeinated beverages.

Thank you for writing this! This will be our first Christmas without our mother (she died this August). It has been hard for me with my own depression because I'm that same way. I'll dance through the responsibilities and then WHAM the sadness settles over me like a dark cloud.